Building a new house in Palo Alto

Friday, December 21, 2012

All my favorite cast of characters appeared in a Wall Street Journal video and article about one of my favorite topics today. The WSJ's talented reporter-editor-camerawoman-in-one, Monika Vosough, does an impressive job explaining the benefits of deconstructing a home vs. demolition. As a bonus, you can also see some shots of our house and a cameo by our general contractor, Jeff, pretending to review building plans with me.

In my opinion, the hero in this story is Roderick Cooper, founder of ReBuild Green a Bay Area deconstruction company. Roderick is one of the most impressive entrepreneurs I've ever met. He grew up in East Palo Alto and pulled himself up by his bootstraps. He saw a market need for deconstruction services and has built a thriving business around it. He keeps thousands of tons of potential waste out of our landfills and diverts the usable materials to non-profits. He also employs dozens of workers, one of whom described Roderick as "the best boss I've ever had." How often do you hear that about 27-year-old?

We hired Roderick and ReBuild Green to do the deconstruction of our house and it was one of the best decisions I've made throughout our building process. Roderick, keep up the great work. You're nailing it! (Pardon the pun).

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

You can declare that she who manages the house design shall get the bigger closet.

You can wait until the framing stage--when an extra 10 square feet is less noticeable-- to casually point out the closet assignments.

Yes, you can do everything imaginable to get your greedy little paws on more precious, precious closet space but in the end the universe will find its own equilibrium. Nature abhors a vacuum. Witness the current state of my closet:

Jeff installing the steam shower generator in the only room that has "extra space" for it. Behind Cisco is another surprise installation...the panel for the radiant floor valves.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

It's been busy town at our construction site. After we passed our structural inspection all of our tradesmen descended upon the house to do their part. This portion of the build is called "rough in" and is when all the infrastructure is installed for the home's systems: electrical, plumbing, heating, AC, audio & data, smoke & carbon monoxide detectors, fire sprinklers, fans, dryer ducts, and the list goes on. It's been eye-opening the amount of expertise, labor and materials that go into building a house and mind boggling the number of decisions there are to be made every day.

The 101-decisions-a-day stage
I've been quiet on the blogging front because so far, this has been the busiest stage for me. By rough in you want to have all your appliances, lighting and plumbing fixtures picked out since your trades people need to install the wiring, circuits, pipes and connections needed to set these fixtures. Not only that, it's helpful to know how you plan to decorate the finished rooms so that you can place lighting and outlets to accomodate your furniture layout and artwork. You can make changes later but they'll cost you a pretty penny once the walls are closed up.

A little more to the right, no left, up, down. Forget it, I'll just put lamps on the nightstand.

The hardest part of this process has been the sheer number of decisions that need to be made every day. Some times they are things that you've probably never given any consideration: Do you want stain or paint grade facias? Flat or round gutters? How do you want to wrap the garage door jam? How high do you want the outlets and light switches to be from the floor? And do you want them vertical or horizontal?

Other times they are decisions with massive dependencies and ripple effects: Do you want light switches by the bed? His and her controls? Where do you want to position them? How wide is your bed frame? How high is the top of your mattress? Will there be anything else on the wall like sconces? What about wallpaper? Are you sure?...there's no going back once you punch holes in the wallpaper. And *BAM* paralysis through analysis hits as you realize you're designing your fancy new master bedroom around a bed you bought on clearance at Macy's after graduating from college. Next thing you know you're out furniture shopping instead of blogging...

Where to put this lovely device? Code requires 3 ft unobstructed clearance in all directions.

Many of the decisions involve adjustments we have to make along the way...like where to hide the upstairs electrical panel. City code requires three feet clearance around it in all directions, so we had to sacrifice some of the floor to ceiling cabinets in the laundry circuit breaker room.

There are also occasional "oops" moments like when our whole house fan arrived a few of inches larger than expected. During the planning stage we mistakenly went off the exterior face dimensions instead of the actual unit measurements which was wider. As a result, it didn't fit between the roof trusses where we had originally planned to put it, so we had to shuffle things around to make it work.

In many cases, decisions you made may change once you see the space come together.

Meh. Make sure you buy your lighting fixtures from a shop with no restocking fees.

There are some people who can imagine the look and scale of things in a room. I am not one of those people, so I love the fact that our GC Jeff mocks things up for us to see. Our kitchen island went through a few iterations before deciding on a configuration that seats four.

Is this island big enough? We widened it 6 more inches so leggy Norwegians don't bang their knees.

Every day there are more decisions to be made...

Fireplace vent or chimney? Looks like Santa's going to have to use the dog door to get in our house.

Much to his chagrin, Thomas learns there are a zillion different roof colors out there.

I could go on and on about how busy I've been but I'm having so much fun, it feels like I'm playing hooky from the actual working world. As I watch all the trades people involved in the process, I am tremendously grateful to have such a hardworking and skilled crew hustling to build our home. They cheerfully show up early every morning, most weekends, (even Black Friday!) and they don't leave until their part is done and done right. Due to all their hard work we passed our All Trades inspection this week, so we're now ready to insulate and begin drywalling.

One of my favorite quotes this year came from Tim Kreiger's must-read New York Times essay, The 'Busy' Trap:

More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor* in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary.

Oh snap! I resemble that statement. I don't seem to recall a Marketeer the Cat or a blogging boa in my beloved childhood books. I'll probably never be able to use a power tool without cutting off a chunk of finger (sadly a true story), so instead I'd like to dedicate this post to all my favorite cool cats and construction characters. I am so in awe of you guys: